Chapter 19. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 for ARM

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 for ARM introduces Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 user space with an updated kernel, which is based on version 4.14 and is provided by the kernel-alt packages. The offering is distributed with other updated packages but most of the packages are standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Server RPMs. Installation ISO images are available on the Customer Portal Downloads page.

The following packages are provided as Development Preview in this release:

libvirt (Optional channel)

qemu-kvm-ma (Optional channel)

Note

KVM virtualization is a Development Preview on the 64-bit ARM architecture, and thus is not supported by Red Hat. For more information, see the Virtualization Deployment and Administration Guide. Customers may contact Red Hat and describe their use case, which will be taken into consideration for a future release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

19.1. New Features and Updates

Core Kernel

This update introduces the qrwlock queue write lock for 64-bit ARM systems. The implementation of this mechanism improves performance and prevents lock starvation by ensuring fair handling of multiple CPUs competing for the global task lock. This change also resolves a known issue, which was present in earlier releases and which caused soft lockups under heavy load.

Note that any kernel modules built for previous versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 for ARM (against the kernel-alt packages) must be rebuilt against the updated kernel. (BZ#1507568)

Security

USBGuard is now fully supported on 64-bit ARM systems

The USBGuard software framework provides system protection against intrusive USB devices by implementing basic whitelisting and blacklisting capabilities based on device attributes. Using USBGuard on 64-bit ARM systems, previously available as a Technology Preview, is now fully supported.

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